Green Options

The nice thing about sewing for kids is that their clothes take so little fabric. A shirt or pair of pants for a five-year-old, a dress for a three-year-old, matching bloomers for both–you could sew any of these things using less than a yard of fabric.

For that reason, kids’ clothes are very well-suited for sewing with recycled materials. I’ve sewed smocked sundresses for my girls out of pillowcases, a pants and kimono shirt outfit for a newborn out of one blouse, two sturdy diaper covers out of a felted wool sweater.

I was afraid of sewing from a pattern when I was a novice seamster, ironically, but now that I sew well, I enjoy using patterns to create more complicated clothing with attractive detailing and sophisticated elements. And so, although they’re pricey, I do buy some of the children’s clothing patterns from Oliver + S each season.

For a while, I didn’t read a lot of fairy tales to my small girls. I avoid presenting them with content that represents violence, and there’s not much more violent than the Brothers Grimm–remember how the stepsisters REALLY try to trick the prince when he comes searching for Cinderella? Shudder.

We’ve been implementing some elements of the Waldorf style of schooling into our home, however, and one thing that’s emphasized in Waldorf study is the experience of myths, legends, and fairy tales–they speak to us as a people, tell who we are as a culture, and are especially relevant to the emotional language of children, both light and dark. They’re also, like the Earth is Our Mother series of books, seen as connective, showing children their place in their community as a whole. And it’s true that my girls love hearing these cross-cultural fairy tales.

Sand dough is a great choice for recycling the pretty clean sandbox sand that remains in your sandbox at the end of the season, which is when we usually make it, but I can imagine that it would also make a super-fun beachside project, perhaps even your own sandcastle souvenir, complete with seashells and a moat ready to be filled with salt water.
Even for play dough aficionados, sand dough has a terrifically gritty texture that provides an entirely new sensory experience to the act of working with the dough, and it can be an excellent component to a sensory table for a special needs child or as a teaching tool for a tactile learner—use it in conjunction with the sawdust dough for two very neat and unusual experiences.

Like the sand dough and the sawdust dough, oil dough is another unique sensory experience. It’s smooth and creamy and soft, and yes, it will leave your hands and work surface oily, so be prepared.
The oil is what makes this dough truly special, however. You can use the cheapest oil available and your dough will work just fine, but for a treat you can substitute in any other oil that you’d like, taking advantage of its properties—something to soften the skin, perhaps, or something soothing especially for a child with eczema can play with, or you can substitute in some essential oils for an aromatherapy benefit (be cautious, of course, about using essential oils on children—they’re smaller than we are, and you know that a little essential oil already goes a long way).
You will need:

Unlike the sawdust dough, the sand dough, and even the oil dough, the cornstarch dough uses no flour, but instead calls for cornstarch and salt. This makes a good play dough for someone who might be sensitive to most flours, or perhaps to use up some more of that cornstarch that I keep making you buy for other art supply recipes.
Unlike the other dough recipes that I’ve shared, as well, this dough does require cooking over low heat, which actually most play dough recipes do require. It’s just something to be aware of when you have little helpers on hand.
You will need:

One thing about bubble solution is that it’s super cheap. At the beginning of the season I marched stalwartly into Target to buy tampons (I avoid Target, because although I try to avoid new purchases, I am weak in the face of a deal), and somehow ended up with gallons of bubble solution for basically pennies. A lot of which the girls managed to spill into the minivan carpet on the ride home, so it was just as well that I bought extra—bonus carpet shampoo, I suppose.
Sometimes, however, you don’t want to buy something just because it’s a deal. Perhaps you have an empty container of bubble solution and just need some product, not the packaging, or perhaps you and your child like to experiment with recipes, or perhaps you’re just of the DIY mindset and would rather make something yourself rather than purchase it—admirable goals, all.

You can make play dough a gazillion kabillion six million ways. Trust me—I have made play dough from laundry lint, and thusly I know my stuff.
As the packrat/eccentric lady/aficionado of bizarre craft projects and art experiences, I am the designated inheritor of a myriad of passed-down recipes for homemade art materials from both sides of my family. And having two little girls with a lot of time on their hands and a love for anything messy and hands-on, we have taken it as a project to make pretty much every recipe at one time or another. For my next few posts, I’ll be sharing with your our favorite and most unusual of the recipes we’ve collected.
First up: Do you have any sawdust?

I could tell you all the educational reasons for making soap crayons—children’s learning should be experiential, experience with art should be as varied as possible, following a recipe utilizes math concepts, making something that you can use builds self-confidence and self-sufficiency, having a brand-new experience along with an adult adds adventure and models coping—but the truth is just that soap crayons are fun. You’re in the bath, so you’re supposed to be getting clean, but you’re drawing! With color! But the crayons, they’re soap! So you’re still getting clean!
Who would not have fun attempting to wrap their head around that?
To make soap crayons, you will need:

So far I’ve only done crafty green reviews of books, everything from Weekend Sewing to the Crafty Chica. But, and perhaps this is only because our public library is AWESOME and lets me check out feature DVDs and all the new computer games and order pretty much every single obscure crafts book that I ask them for, I also enjoy trying out the large number of crafty software programs that exist. Some of these are good, and some are crappy.
The Form Wild software series is good.
The Form Wild series is a collection of CD software, and each CD contains a collection of three-dimensional animal cut-outs. The files pull up as Adobe Acrobat Reader files, and you can save them to your computer so that you don’t have to reinsert the CD each time you want to use the files.

I’ve been having so much fun with my Crafty Green Book Reviews (I didn’t realize that I had so much to say about Weekend Sewing until I started sayin it), you might be able to tell, as well, that I have been way into paper crafting lately. I have always GOT to be doing something with my hands or I am not mentally healthy, and since I forgot my Ravenclaw House Scarf project when I packed for my vacation to California, I’ve discovered that paper-folding is just about as easy to do at an in-law’s house as it is at home.
Without access to my crafts books and supplies and works-in-progress from home, I’ve become interested again in a web site I discovered a little while ago: Disaster Dioramas by Spitefuls.
Each file set contains all the components necessary to cut out and create a diorama of a given disaster—the diorama of Pompeii appeals to my Classical Studies background, while the diorama of the Titanic appeals to that Leo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet movie that I saw in the theater three, count them THREE times. And then I bought the two-VHS set. And I might still have that set, to pass down to my daughters, you know.